Monitoring of the grassland communities in the East Carpathians Biosphere Reserve -: Basis for the future ILTER site?

The semi-natural meadows belong to the most endangered plant communities in Slovakia. Very valuable grassland types are distributed in the National Park Poloniny - the Slovak part of the East Carpathians Biosphere Reserve (NE Slovakia), but large areas of grasslands are abandoned there. We established 14 permanent plots with different management regimes for the monitoring of changes in the structure of plant communities. Typical permanent plot consists of 4 larger squares (size 5x4 m) for recording of plant community and 4 smaller squares (size 1 x 1 in, divided into 9 parts) for recording of changes in plant populations. The species composition and abundance data are sampled each year, starting in 1994 and 1995. Aim of this research is to find optimal type of management which allow to keep typical structure and composition of plant communities and will be economically acceptable, as well. This set of permanent plots can be considered as representative for given territory, because it covers all endangered grassland communities and 75% of meadow and wetland plant species known from the territory. First results and their implication for management of grasslands in NP Poloniny are discussed in this paper. Because of East Carpathians Biosphere Reserve was identified as potential LTER site during ILTER workshop in Budapest (June 1999), possibilities for use of these plots for LTER site establishment are discussed, too.